People are starting to google “no third solution,” so maybe my blog is becoming more popular. My traffic doesn’t seem to show any upward trend, unfortunately… I get about 1,500 unique visits per month, according to awstats which I use in addition to Google Analytics to track that sort of thing. I have 10 subscribers via Google Reader.
Some people suggest that in order to have security, it’s necessary to concede some liberty in exchange. This is nonsense peddled either by people who want to exercise power over others, or by unthinking drones, people too stupid to really understand what liberty is, what freedom is.
If you don’t have the freedom to voluntarily choose security, you’re neither free, or secure. When “security,” so-called, is thrust upon you by a government, recognize that it is nothing short of extortion. Implicitly, you will always be “secure” from the government’s own violence, so long as you continue to pay your tribute.
If the agency professing to provide you with security is the same agency that skims your paycheck every week, that will freeze your bank accounts if you stop paying for their services, that will throw you in jail if you deny them, and will kill you if you try to defend yourself from its advances, what they are providing is not security in any sense of the word. The guns of government are always pointed first at the very citizens they pretend to protect.Mises said, “The issue is always the same: the government, or the market. There is no third solution.”
Faced with a problem, one can rely on violence (the government) or free association (the market) to find a resolution. There is no third solution, and any co-mingling of the government and the market is ultimately just a bastardized market, not a free market where participants voluntarily interact to exchange value for value. The government makes and enforces rules to which most free people wouldn’t otherwise consent, imposing them generally upon a disenfranchised minority. Maybe it is one man ruling many, maybe it is a group of men ruling over others.
In any case, the cost of government is always and inevitably, freedom foregone.